The 8 Most Poisonous Animals

February 26, 2008 |
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Some animals use strength, claws, or teeth to defend themselves. But thousands of animals use highly venomous or toxic poisons instead. Some shoot poisons towards their victims, and others store toxins in their glands or skin. Here are the top eight most poisonous animals in the world:

Box Jellyfish

Box jellyfish are found in the ocean waters throughout Asia and Australia. The stingers and tentacles on this animal can cause excruciating pain for weeks, and are capable of stopping your heart or paralyzing your lungs. To top it off, the venom will slowly eat away at your skin.

Marbled Cone Snail

This snail thrives in reefs throughout the world. The snail shoots out a proboscis with a tooth-like appendage that attaches onto the victim. Humans that have experienced a bite experience weakness, numbness, nausea and eventually death due to lung paralysis.

Blue Ringed Octopus

Within a few minutes after a painless bite from a Blue Ringed Octopus, a deadly neurotoxin in the animal’s saliva causes muscular weakness and numbness, followed by a cessation of breathing and ultimately death.

Death Stalker Scorpion

Found throughout North Africa and the Middle East, it has the most toxic sting of any scorpion anywhere in the world. It causes an intense and unbearable pain, then fever, followed by coma, convulsions, paralysis and death.

Stonefish

Inhabiting the waters of the Pacific throughout the Australian coast, this fish resembles a sea rock or coral. But a powerful toxin stored within its 13 spines can stop nearly every animal that it connects with. If contact comes with humans, the venom will cause intense pain, swelling of tissue and shock, followed by death.

Sydney Funnel Web Spider

A native of the Australian outback, the Sydney Funnel Web Spider is large and very aggressive. From its fangs, the spider can deliver a powerful neurotoxin that causes extreme pain and is capable of killing a person within 15 minutes.

Inland Taipan

This Australian snake is the most poisonous snake on earth. One bite from this serpent contains enough potent toxin to kill about 100 people. Fortunately, the Taipan is a very gentle and shy reptile.

Poison Dart Frog

The beautiful Poison Dart Frog is found in the rain forests of Central and South America. The frog‘s skin contains a toxic chemical that sickens or kills any animal that touches or eats it. Two micrograms of this deadly toxin, just enough to fit on the head of a pin, will easily kill a human being or other large mammal.

I’m always amazed at the sheer intelligence and brilliance of nature, and how, if you live in sync with it, everything has purpose. Not so impressed, however, with the efforts of conventional medical science that tries to extract purpose by using toxins to treat disease.

For example, according to the San Diego Zoo’s website, poison produced by the phantasmal poison frog (Epipedrobates tricolor) has been studied for use as a potential painkiller. It is supposedly 200 times more effective than morphine. Secretions from poison frogs are also being studied for use in muscle relaxants and heart stimulants.

This may sound like a great idea at first, but things that are naturally designed to kill have a nasty tendency to do that job all too well.

Western medicine’s fascination with using toxic compounds to treat and “cure” disease is frustrating, to say the least, when you consider the fact that health is best achieved through healthy lifestyle choices, such as nutritious unprocessed raw “whole” foods, sunshine and physical exercise.

Although there’s no telling whether the toxic secretions from South American jungle frogs will turn out to be a disaster in pill form, despite the best of intentions, there are other examples where a natural toxin became the rave, and now, years later is proving to be far from the miracle it was painted up to be.

The botulin toxin is one of the most dangerous natural poisons known to man. Clostridium botulinum, the bacteria that produces a potent neurotoxin, which is the cause of acute food poisoning, or botulism, was initially used to treat certain eye disorders. But when patients noticed a marked reduction in wrinkles around their eyes as a side effect, it gave birth to Botox, which has become a wildly popular cosmetic treatment.

Unfortunately, as the Associated Press reported on February 8, 2008, Botox has now been linked to dangerous botulism symptoms in some users, and approximately 16 children who were given botulinum injections for muscle spasms have died as the drug spread from the injection site. The FDA issued a warning against both Botox and Myobloc, stating they are now reviewing the safety data.

Anyway, my point here is merely this: nature is so complex and interconnected, providing for each species the things they need to stay healthy and protect themselves against dangerous enemies. Your immune system does a wonderful job of this, as long as you work with it, rather than against it.